3 Questions for 2U’s New VP, Adam Fein

The last time we caught up with Adam Fein was when he was serving in an online leadership role at the University of North Texas. After a stint with Risepoint, Adam recently transitioned to 2U as vice president of academic innovation and strategic partnerships. As an (uncompensated) member of the 2U University Partner Advisory Council, I’m interested in understanding the company’s strategy. I asked if Adam would be willing to share some of his goals for his new role, and he graciously agreed.

Q: Tell us about your new gig. Why 2U? Why now?

A: I spent over two decades working inside universities and, as you know, I loved it. I had the chance to build innovative online programs, work with faculty, listen to students and think about how digital education fits into an institution’s broader mission and strategy. This role feels less like leaving that work behind and more like getting a different vantage point on it.

What attracted me to 2U was the opportunity to work with many institutions as they wrestle with questions I know well: What are learners looking for? Where is the workforce headed? Why have universities started to move beyond offering a single product (degree) and what do they do next within new diversified strategy models? Where could another perspective or set of capabilities help?

Those questions are especially interesting right now because online education has matured. It’s no longer a specialized corner of the university. It’s increasingly part of how institutions think about their academic portfolios, the adult learners they serve and their long-term strategies. And that portfolio should now extend beyond degrees to certificates, microcredentials, executive education, employer partnerships and other forms of learning.

My role sits right in the middle of that. I get to bring what I learned on the university side of the table to conversations about where institutions should go next and how 2U and edX can help them get there.

Q: You spent seven years at UNT and before that 17 years at the University of Illinois in various online and digital learning leadership roles. Among your friends and colleagues who work at universities, we think of you as “one of us.” Given your deep and long higher ed experience, how do you think about your new role within a corporate setting in terms of building authentic partnerships with universities?

A: I still think of myself as “one of you,” so I appreciate the inclusion.

One thing you learn after spending enough time inside universities is that there’s rarely one model that works everywhere. Institutions have different missions, cultures, capabilities and priorities. They’ve also built substantially more digital capability over the past decade. That changes what they need from a partner.

That stated, partnership always has to start with listening. I am fortunate enough to have been a part of some true partnerships, of course within and across higher education, but also with some terrific companies. When those partnerships were at their strongest and most impactful, we co-designed and co-created experiences for learners that brought together our institutional strengths with the insights, efficiency and reach more typical of ed tech. The partnership is then centered on trust, shared goals and an unwavering commitment to world-class teaching and learning for the students who trust us with their time and effort.

Universities shouldn’t outsource their strategy. They have to—and should—own it. A good partner makes that strategy stronger and easier to execute by bringing things that are harder for any one institution to build alone: market intelligence; aggregate data; experience across institutions, verticals and regions; technology; specialized expertise; and broad reach and scale without sacrificing quality.

You have to earn the opportunity to become that kind of thought partner. You don’t walk in with a predetermined answer. You understand the institution and the problem it’s actually trying to solve.

I’ve been on the receiving end of both kinds of partnerships. That experience shapes how I want 2U to show up.

Q: Even within the company’s partner universities, there is some confusion about where edX fits in with 2U, even five years after the acquisition from MIT and Harvard. How do low-cost, scaled online programs (edX) connect with higher-cost online degrees (2U)? Why should universities be investing in developing certificates for the edX platform?

A: I understand your framing, but I’ll push back a little, as I don’t think “edX equals low-cost certificates and 2U equals higher-cost degrees” reflects the full picture of how learners can actually experience education with our partner institutions.

2U is the company and edX is our global learning platform. Our combined opportunity is to help universities think about online education as a portfolio rather than a collection of separate products.

A degree may be the right answer for someone today. For someone else, it might be a certificate, executive education or a shorter learning experience. And those needs change throughout a person’s career. Inside a university, those offerings might live in different schools or budgets. Learners don’t experience them that way. They experience an institution and make their choice based on a question like this: Does this university have something relevant for me right now at a cost point I can afford and an ROI that makes the time worth it?

This is what makes edX interesting. It gives universities a way to reach learners across different kinds of learning experiences and stack those experiences to build a relationship over a much longer period of their lives.

We are living in a new era for higher education. While the in-person, four-year undergraduate experience remains vital, it cannot be the end of our relationship with that learner (and I don’t mean sending our graduates postcards about special donation opportunities). We are in the era of lifelong learning—the 60-year curriculum—where students will move in and out of our institutions as their lives and careers change. Where, if we serve and communicate with them in the right way, they can be satisfied return visitors.

The institution that best serves these students is not the one that graduates them once—it’s the one that helps them continuously adapt over a lifetime. That is why I’m so excited about working in this space and for this company. 2U has university partners with deep expertise in areas learners increasingly need, from AI and technology to business, health care and other rapidly changing fields. And we have edX that gives us a platform to bring that expertise to learners throughout their careers, a platform with high visibility and high recognition as a domain with the highest-quality academic partners.

So I wouldn’t tell every university to build more certificates; rather, I’d suggest we look together at where an institution has distinctive expertise, where there is real learner and employer demand, and how the right offerings fit into the rest of their portfolio.

That’s where 2U and edX come together. We know we have work to do, but our goals around (1) helping institutions understand where the opportunities are, (2) what’s worth pursuing and (3) providing them a world-class platform to reach learners at scale haven’t changed. We are not interested in just putting more things online. We are interested in true university partnerships centered around trust and the ability to reach the right learners at the right time with the right program.